So, you’ve spent months and possibly years on completing your manuscript, you’ve edited, proofread, edited, re-written, edited some more, and now, finally, you’ve finished it! What’s next?

Well, the obvious next stage is in publishing your book, but before you go rushing to KDP or IngramSpark, you should give some very real thought to your book cover design (strange you say, a book cover design company talking about the merits of having a professional cover...hmmmm).
​
Of course, we’re bound to be of the opinion that having a professional cover will help your book, but whether you like it or not, people do judge a book by its cover, so ensuring that your book looks professional and grabs the attention of a reader (and in a good way), is vital to the success of your book.

The back cover of your book gives you an opportunity to sell the content to a potential reader, but what elements do you need to have upon it, and why should you spend more time that you may think in getting this right?

First of all, the book’s back cover is a sales opportunity for you as an author, it enables you to give a clear reason as to why the reader would want to delve into the pages within and buy your book, the message you have upon the back page will differ slightly from fiction to non-fiction, but it’s job will be the same.

The Blurb
Looking at fiction first of all, the back page should contain a short synopsis of your story, giving some tantalizing details where you introduce the main characters, hit the reader with a hook to make them want to find out more, set out the landscape (time and location) and be aimed at your target audience (the language you would use in a historical adult fiction novel will be different to that of a children’s book for the under 10s of course).

There are a lot of details which should go into the front and back cover of a book, as the face and advertising of your publication, the cover design should be eye-catching and at the same time sell the title to a reader, but aside from an image with your name and the book’s title upon it, what should you consider for the cover?

To begin with you need to understand two things, firstly, the book and its concept, and secondly the marketplace and its space within it.

So, let’s look at the first element, your book and its primary focal point.

Now no one knows your book like you, after all, you did write it, but, you still have to step back a little and look at the overall concept, this can mean condensing the message down to one main focal point. 

Having created thousands of book covers for authors from all genres, backgrounds and corners of the world, you gain a great understanding of what you should ask when starting on a new cover, what details you’ll need, what you won’t and the specifics that would make creating a book cover design impossible without.
​
There are basic details that most authors will naturally pass on to a designer and others that maybe they’ll forget about, so, here is our list of seven of the most important things you should consider when letting your book cover design know about your book.

Completing any task which requires creativity is a dream for most of us and something daunting for others, but even the most creative people in the world have days where they have to dig a little deeper in order to find that creative genius.

So, how to do you keep it flowing every single day?

Well there are plenty of things that you can do right now to ensure that you keep your creativity flowing each day, here are our top ten ways to stay creative.

If you’re self-publishing a book, you will find a great selection of print on demand services to choose from, they’ll offer varying options and services, but all of them will give you a path to getting your book in front of a reader.

​From a design perspective (and by this, I mean your book cover design), each print on demand service will vary with regards to how the book cover is created, the size, margins, spine width, format and even color profile. As each service will print your book slightly differently, you will find that each option will need to be created differently too.

We have all heard the phrase “Never judge a book by its cover”, the point being that we should look a little deeper than just face value, however, at the same time we know that advertising (and this is what your book cover is) works. The leading brands in every avenue of industry spend a great deal of time and effort in creating advertising that speaks, and most importantly, relates to their audience, that connection is what can help to give the consumer the motivation in selecting their product (pricing is also a factor, but in a market where prices are similar, your advertising is what will make the decision for the buyer).​

The book cover design is the face of your advertising and packaging for your work, as we all know, people do judge books (and pretty much everything else) initially by first impression, this is why advertising is such a massive industry and why you should take it seriously too.

So, having a professional book cover is important if you want your work to be taken seriously, we all know that reviews help with this too, but you need to sell books before you’ll even get these (genuine reviews that is, and we all know that the first handful are friends and family).
​
If you are taking your life as a professional writer seriously then you’ll understand that your journey is one similar to starting (and running) a small business, again, this is if you are looking to sell copies of your work (and why wouldn’t you be) reaching a larger audience than those who dabble in self-publishing for fun.